[Flathead Fever]

Early on, when there were not very many cam grinders the SU1A was one of record setting cams at the dry lakes. Intended for light roadsters and coupes. It's not a radical cam by today's standards. I have an original one in '32 chassis with a 59A engine. I've never finished the car but the engine sounds really nice. It has a nice lope to it. That was considered a full-race cam. You lose compression at the lower end because of the valve overlap with a full race cam. To offset that loss, you need higher compression heads and more cubic inches to get some of that lost lower end power back. Since it was designed to run at 5000 rpm on a dry lake bed they were not concerned with the low rpm power.

I collect 1930s to early 1950s dry lakes programs and photos. Early on the programs listed the entries heads and intakes, later they also added the cams and ignitions. This is a page from a June 5-6, 1948, SCTA El Mirage program. These cars are listed separately from the club entries, these cars are grouped together because they were the fastest points cars from the previous season. You can see the number 1 car is running a Clay Smith Cam, probably a 272. That is good sounding cam but can it still be street-driven. Jack Calori was my good friend and was a Lancer Club Member. He set the early 1947 SCTA "C" Class Roadster Record with a Clay Smith 272 cam. Clay Smith was his good friend. That was a light roadster that was also driven on the street. 1948 is about the end of when a roadster could set a dry lakes record and still be street-driven. The cams these guys chose had a lot to do with if the cam grinder was in their club or neighborhood. On this page you can see Winfield cams, Harman Collins, Clay Smith cams even an Engle cam, he ground the cams later on for the Shelby GT-350 and Cobra race engines. And there are others. Randy Shinn with the #2 car is running a Winfield. He beat Calori's record with that Winfield cam in 1947. Clay Smith and Winfield's were the most popular cams in 1948

Johnny Ryan, a Gopher Club member built one of my favorite dry lakes '32 roadsters. We later became good friends. He ran a Weber cam because both Weber brothers were in the Gophers club when it was formed in 1937. A lot of the Gophers Club worked for Earl Evans foundry. So they ran Evans heads and intakes.


1947 the lancers Club won the overall points championship, so they got the lowest batch of numbers for the 1948 season, starting with 100. They advertised themselves as the "World's Fastest Roadster Club". Here they are minus the fastest club cars on that first page. Ten Clay Smith cams, One Isky, and one Winfield. You can still send a core to Clay Smith and have one ground.